  > no headphone jack

I am fully old man screaming at the clouds here, but what does this cost for Dell to include? I insist on a wired headset - telecommunications already barely works, I don't want to add wireless+battery problems into the mix.

▲ LexGray a minute ago | parent | next [-]

I want to say I’ve broken every headphone jack I ever had. Yanking on them, debris getting in the switch, debris triggering the optical if it had one. 3.5 was never a great design. Too many physical ways for it to break, from static from a loose connection, debris stuck inside like pebbles getting jammed, debris stuck under the switch preventing recognition. False positive or accidental triggers that take a while to track down why the speakers are muted.

Of all the parts on electronics I have owned i would put headphone jack just behind power supply for least reliable and that it was set to override digital settings when something was connected felt like a loss of control.

I am very forgetful, wireless has been a godsend by comparison and I don’t get hurt with cable snags. I’d pay extra to remove it before shipping if it were an option.

▲ pseudosavant 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Agreed, losing the headphone jack on something the size of a phone was already questionable space saving for a bigger battery. But on something the size of a laptop, it is a joke. I'm sure it has more to do with saving $1 per laptop than any user benefit.

▲ prmoustache 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

no jack doesn't mean wireless only. Not having TRRS 3.5mm is a bit annoying but there are lots of usb-a or usb-c headset that have an embedded DAC + you can always use the DAC/USB soundcard of your choice. Also many laptops only had TRS which really killed the appeal of having analog wired equipment if you were forced to use the embedded laptop microphone.

	▲	geerlingguy 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		With only two USB-C ports that means you get just headphones and power if you're not using a hub or USB dock.

▲ gertrunde 16 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There are USB headsets, that usually provides a few extra handy features, like volume/mute and call answer/hangup buttons.

Does it have to be wired via headphones jack?

▲ 15155 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

3.5mm TRS jacks might cost 10 cents to include and then hundreds of dollars to service when they break. The issue is not the BOM cost.

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jackdoe an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> then hundreds of dollars to service when they break

Can you explain what do you mean by that? It is quite rare to see broken trrs jack on a laptop, at least I have never experienced one, nor on walkman or anything getting heavy plug/unplug use.

I thought it is an issue in reducing the cost to manufacture the case or something.

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scarlehoff 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

The jack actually broke on my old xps. Changing it with an aliexpress replacement took about 15 minutes and something like 3€

So yeah, they break, but they are (or used to be?) quite cheap to fix (and this was one of the super thin 13" xps)

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Marsymars 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I’ve never had one break due to heavy use, but broke one on my work desktop due to forgetting I was wearing headphones and yanking on it when I got up.

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3eb7988a1663 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Does anyone even do repairs anymore? Swap a motherboard and that's it.

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j16sdiz 32 minutes ago | parent [-]

So... swapping $100 component for a $0.3 break?

Doesn't this make including the jack even less justifiable?

	▲	guelo 26 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Or don't swap it and live without the jack. But I have never seen a broken 3.5mm port but I've seen many, many broken or flaky USB-C ports.

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Groxx an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

We've got laptops with modular USB-C ports that solve this effectively perfectly. An audio one would be even simpler. The only reason you don't see it everywhere is because they're being outrageously hostile to repairs, and choosing to charge you hundreds of dollars for repairs on a part that they know is easily broken.

▲ truncate an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I like a good old headphone jack, but then the USB DACs these days are also super small and portable that I just keep connected to my wired sets. I have couple nice IEMs, and because my phone doesn't have jack, I've to carry around USB DAC anyway.

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noir_lord an hour ago | parent [-]

My (Razer Blackshark) gaming headset does that - the actual headset has a 3.5mm jack on it but the "guts" is a USB DAC with some THX stuff supposedly built in (questionable utility but most of the games I play don't support it anyway) - I figure they reuse the same headset components down the market and just don't ship the DAC, it works flawlessly under Windows/Linux so no real issues with it and I can use it with any other set of wired headphones (of similar impedance) which is nice since headsets wear out eventually but the DAC is solid state so should last much longer.

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ciupicri an hour ago | parent [-]

Doesn't it use the CPU more because of the inefficiency of USB?

	▲	noir_lord 34 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Theoretically maybe (assuming it's not doing hardware offloading but I don't think that is all that common) but feeding a DAC with audio over USB isn't even a rounding error on one core and I have 16 of them (16C/32T) - iirc the actual DAC just takes PCM over USB 2.0 (Linux did tell me when I was curious), that's nothing to a modern desktop computer never mind a powerful gaming/development one. Nothing for the desktop in the last couple of decades is going to struggle with that.
	▲	truncate 39 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I mainly use Apple one on MacBook, and haven't noticed any CPU or issues with that. I've another one which has more power, can't say I use it that much so no idea about CPU, but I think because of higher power draw may affect battery slightly (prob bigger issue on phones).

▲ gumby an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Surely a usb c headset would work

▲ dghlsakjg 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Many headphones can do audio over usb-c if you want a wired connection. If you want to use a fully analog set of cans, you can also just get a usb-c to 3.5mm adapter for a few bucks.

No need for wireless and battery, just not the plug you were expecting.

▲ parl_match 18 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

repair costs, more substantial than bom.

> I insist on a wired headset

usb audio generally works great, and because it's powered, you often get better audio quality (with microphone arrays for anc)

and even neat features like system volume integration with buttons and ANC

i have a yealink uh48 but you can get almost-as-good functionality for a lot less (or pay more for even better!)